The Morning After: Explaining pinch-to-zoom in a court of law

#Tech

A debate between lawyers and Judge Schroeder in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse focused on pinching-to-zoom on an iPad, a feature that’s been on Apple devices since 2007's iPod Touch.

Thomas Binger, the assistant district attorney leading the prosecution, planned to play a video on an iPad, showing Rittenhouse shooting Joseph Rosenbaum. When the assistant DA said he’d use a zoom function on the iPad, the defense lawyers objected, claiming an iPad's pinch-to-zoom function could modify footage of the incident, "creating what it thinks is there, not what necessarily is there."

This lead to the onus being on the prosecution to show the imagery remained in its "virginal state," not on the defense to prove manipulation. Pinch-to-zoom on all devices may use algorithms, but only to scale the image — it doesn't change the content itself.

According to The New York Times, Binger said zooming in on images on devices is a routine part of daily life that all jurors would understand and asked for an adjournment, which was denied. The judge ordered a 15-minute recess, suggesting that Mr. Binger could “within minutes” get someone to testify regarding the accuracy of the zoomed-in video.

— Mat Smith

Sony reportedly cuts PS5 production again as chip shortages and shipment issues bite

It will build a million fewer units than it forecast earlier, according to a report.

Sony's PlayStation 5 may not be able to beat the PS4's first year sales record due to an ongoing component shortage, according to Bloomberg. The company has reportedly cut its production forecast of 16 million down to 15 million, putting its target of 14.8 million PS5 sales by March in jeopardy, if the report is accurate. It also makes a bad situation worse for anyone hoping to pick up a PS5 over the holidays.

Continue reading.

Sponsored by CISCO

2021 Security Outcomes Study for Small Businesses

ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED review

The best Windows creator laptop.

The ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED appeals to some of the most demanding creators, with a stunning color-accurate 4K OLED display and ASUS dial to control Adobe Creative Cloud apps. There’s a lot packed into this machine to ensure it can compete with desktop machines, offering excellent performance for video and photo editing, 3D apps and more thanks to the RTX 3070 GPU, AMD Ryzen 9 eight-core CPU and high-speed NVMe SSD. It’s fluid, fast and offers good battery life. The main downside is the high-tech but currently useless SD Express card reader.

Continue reading.

All the 'fun' gifts we actually want to receive

Yes, a vacuum is fun.

Enough careful advice, it’s time for Engadget’s editors to talk about what they’d love to get for the holidays. And we’re a bunch with diverse interests. Our suggestions cover Tamagotchis, sex toys, massage guns and flip-phones.

Continue reading.

HTC's Vive Focus 3 headset update unlocks a larger VR area, WiFi 6e and more

You won't need new hardware for any of the new features.

HTC has updated its excellent but expensive Vive Focus 3 business-focused headset with a much larger play area, WiFi 6E and more. The software update comes with no change in hardware as HTC "secretly built in the 6E required hardware from day 1," tweeted HTC's global head of hardware products, Shen Ye.

Continue reading.

Panic's Playdate handheld is delayed, again, until 2022

A 'critical' battery issue forced the company's hand.

We’ve reported on this intriguing handheld’s delays at least five times. What’s six between friends? The company announced the delay Thursday, attributing it to a “critical” battery issue it discovered late in the process of manufacturing the first 20,000 production units of the console. “We made the difficult, expensive call to replace all of our existing batteries with new ones from a totally different battery supplier,” said Panic’s Cabel Sasser. The company says the new power cell features “much better” battery life than the previous one. So at least there’s that.

Continue reading.